The relationship between reading age, education and life ...

The relationship between reading age, education and life outcomes

Ellie Mulcahy, Eleanor Bernardes and Dr Sam Baars

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Executive Summary

Reading ability has a considerable impact on both educational attainment and wider life outcomes.

Research finds robust associations between reading ability and educational success, and reading enjoyment and reading behaviour appear to be key mechanisms in this relationship. Reading ability affects attainment in literacy and, due to the need to read to gather information and understand examination instructions, reading ability also affects attainment across the curriculum.

The effect of reading ability continues throughout life. Compared to their counterparts with `functional literacy' levels (a reading age of 11 or above), individuals with low reading ability are:

Less likely to gain employment, particularly skilled roles

More likely to exhibit behavioural problems and delinquency

Less like to earn an above average salary

More likely to offend, be incarcerated and develop a habit of lifelong offending

Less likely to achieve qualifications or receive work based training or promotion

Less likely to use preventative health services, remain healthy or manage treatment and medications well

More likely to have low levels of psychological wellbeing and life satisfaction

As poor reading ability is associated with such profound negative life outcomes, it can have huge cost to an individual and also to the economy.

The relationships between reading ability, education and wider life outcomes are complex and difficult to establish. Whilst poor reading may cause unemployment for some individuals, not all poor readers are unemployed. However, on balance the existing literature suggests that reading is a crucially important component of achieving success in education and throughout life.

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Table of contents

Introduction................................................................................................................................ 3 Assessment of reading age......................................................................................................... 4 The impact of reading age on educational outcomes................................................................ 5 The relationship between reading age and long term life outcomes........................................ 7 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................ 10 References................................................................................................................................ 11

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Introduction

Many children and adults fall below a basic level of reading. Around 16% of UK adults are functionally illiterate (NLT, 2011) and the UK has one of the highest youth illiteracy rates in the developed world (OECD, 2015). The situation in the UK is not unique, in the US 14% of adults have a `below basic' reading ability and 21% have a reading ability below a reading age of 11 (NIL, 2015).

Ensuring that all children achieve a reading age of 11, ideally by age 11, is seen as essential to their school career and their ability to make a successful transition into adulthood and the labour market (Dugdale and Clark, 2008a; Gross, 2008; Allen, 2011). Poor readers are less likely to achieve 5 A* to C grades at GCSE (DfE, 2015) and are less likely complete compulsory education (Hernandez, 2011). The impact of poor reading is seen across all subjects, as independent reading is often crucial to gaining knowledge in the wider curriculum (Cimmiyotti, 2013).

Ensuring young people can read well by the age of 11 also has much wider social and economic benefits. Research has linked poor reading ability to an increased likelihood of unemployment, homelessness, divorce, health problems and incarceration, and a reduced likelihood of employment, home ownership, life satisfaction and community and political engagement (Dugdale and Clark, 2008a; Parsons and Bynner, 2008).

Further steps to ensure all children read well by age 11 would have a substantial economic impact. Research estimates that had this been achieved in the past decade, the economy as a whole would have benefitted, potentially raising GDP by an extra ?32.1 billion or 2.1% by 2025 (Save the Children and Stanford University, 2014). KPMG (2006) calculated the long-term cost of literacy difficulties as ?1.73 billion per annum due to the cost of crime, poor health, special educational needs support and unemployment.

This report reviews the research on how reading age impacts on both educational outcomes and long-term life outcomes including occupation and earning potential, health, offending risk and psychological wellbeing. It considers:

1. How reading age is measured 2. The impact of reading age on educational attainment 3. The impact of reading age on wider life outcomes

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Assessment of reading age

An individual's `reading age' expresses their reading ability in terms of the average ability of others at that age. An individual is defined as `reading well' if they are reading at or above that average. An adult is considered to be `functionally illiterate' if their reading age is below the average expected of an 11 year old (NLT).

Reading tests measure ability through the assessment of a range of reading skills including: ? Sight word reading: reading words without sounding them out ? Decoding: sounding words out ? Non-word reading: sounding out made up words e.g. fot ? Reading comprehension ? Reading fluency: the rate of word naming ? Reading accuracy: the number of words correctly read

Scores are allocated a corresponding `reading age' which is the average score for a large standardised sample of each age group. There are three commonly used scoring systems: WRAT and SWRT which are commonly used in the UK and STAR which is commonly used in the US. Each test has a number of advantages and disadvantages and these can be compared by examining their `internal reliability' and `validity':

? internal reliability: the extent to which all parts of the test contribute to the measuring of reading ability

? validity: the extent to which the test measures reading ability precisely rather than anything else

The wide ranging achievement score (WRAT) is a widely used measure of the basic academic skills of word reading, sentence comprehension, spelling and maths computation. The reading score measures letter and word decoding as well as the understanding of words and the ability to comprehend ideas. The WRAT has an extremely high internal reliability and moderate validity (Robertson and Wilkinson, 2006), making it a useful test which does measure reading ability.

The single word reading test (SWRT) is most commonly used with children to assess their word reading skills. The test involves reading aloud sets of words which are graded in difficulty. Sight vocabulary and error analysis can provide a child's overall reading score. It has been found to have both high reliability and high validity (Foster, 2007; Snowling et al., 2009; Stothard et al., 2010), making it an accurate measure of reading ability.

STAR assessments are computer adaptive tests (CAT) widely used in the US. STAR early literacy measures awareness of phoneme and words concepts, comprehension and higher level skills. STAR reading assessment tests reading skills of pupils aged 8 and above. Both tests have high reliability and STAR reading has high validity, though STAR early literacy has only moderate validity (STAR reading, 2010) which supports it's wide usage but highlights that other skills such as communication may interfere slightly with the STAR early literacy scores.

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The impact of reading age on educational outcomes

Reading is a core component of education and is crucial for independent learning. Reading enjoyment and reading for pleasure have also been found to have significant impacts on educational attainment, often a larger impact than other factors such as socioeconomic background (Kirsch et al., 2003). Reading age can impact on:

? overall literacy ability including writing ability and reading related skills such as text comprehension

? attainment across the curriculum in subjects such as maths and science ? higher level comprehension skills necessary for educational success ? the likelihood of completing education

1. How does reading age affect attainment in literacy? The development of early reading and early writing are closely interconnected. Some theories suggest that reading precedes writing in the same way that listening precedes speaking, (Shanahan, 2006).

Reading ability impacts directly on writing ability and literacy skills, with reading ability at 6, 9 and 11 years old accurately predicting reading comprehension, vocabulary and general knowledge at 16 years old even when controlling for cognitive ability (Cunningham and Stanovich, 1997). Regular reading improves writing skills and grammar (Cunningham and Stanovich, 1997; Krashen, 2004) as well as spelling and verbal vocabulary (Sullivan and Brown, 2013).

However, the literature also suggests that the relationship between reading and writing is bidirectional: word recognition can impact spelling and the ability to write fluently, but learning to spell can also influence word recognition (Berninger et al., 2002).

2. How does reading age affect overall educational attainment? Research suggests that reading ability affects attainment in all subjects. A study of 16 year old students found a relationship between basic reading ability and academic success. This relationship strengthens in most education systems when pupils are around 8 years old as they move from `learning to read' to `reading to learn' (Espin and Deno, 1993). In all subjects, pupils are required to read to gather knowledge and to understand written instructions and questions in examinations. Pupils must reach a reading level of 250, approximately a reading age of 13, in order to understand the main ideas in a literature or science based text (NAEP; NCES, 2006). This reading level is also necessary for the use of higher level comprehension skills, such as making generalizations and inferences, which are necessary for success across a range of subjects.

The impact of reading ability on overall educational success is most strongly illustrated by the fact that poor readers are less likely to complete secondary education. Studies from both the US and the UK have shown that between 70% and 80% of pupils that drop out of education are poor readers (Codding, 2001; Dugdale and Clark, 2008a). This relationship is set in motion at an early age: 1 in 6 pupils who are poor readers at age 7 will not complete secondary education, a dropout rate that is six times higher than the rate for proficient readers and for those who have a below basic reading ability the dropout rate rises to 1 in 4 (Hernandez, 2011).

In maths, pupils with low text comprehension ability are less likely to be able to solve mathematical word problems, and this relationship holds when controlling for technical reading skill, indicating that text comprehension specifically hinders understanding of concepts across subjects (VileniusTuohimaa et al. 2008). Children with a higher level of reading comprehension have also been found to learn problem solving and data interpretation skills faster than lower ability readers, suggesting that reading comprehension is linked to a conceptual understanding of mathematics (Grimm, 2008).

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